Divine Justice

      

Someone is murdered.  The police arrest two men and accuse them of the crime. One man is guilty and one is innocent. The case comes before a judge who has to decide who is guilty and who is innocent.  The evidence is murky and both men claim they are innocent and insist that the other man did the crime.  How is the judge to decide?  To answer this question economist Peter Leeson reviewed some court records from the Middle Ages and found that if judges could not decide who was guilty, they resorted to “trial-by-ordeal” and turned the accused over to a Catholic priest who would administer some ordeal such as pouring boiling water on the accused or applying a hot iron to their body.  Priests believed that God knew who was guilty and would deliver the innocent from any harm.  Each man was offered the choice of confessing or undergoing the ordeal.  In theory the guilty would confess and the innocent would be protected by God.

Peter Leeson examined Church records from thirteenth-century Hungary and tabulated the results of 308 “trial-by-ordeal” cases (chronicled in the 2014 book, Think Like a Freak by Steven D. Levitt & Stephen J. Dubner).  One-hundred cases were settled by the way of a confession.  The remaining 208 cases were resolved by carrying out the ordeal.  How many of these 208 defendants were harmed by the ordeal?  Only 78!  The remaining 130 men underwent trial-by-ordeal and since they were innocent, God protected them from any harm. Skeptics might be forgiven for looking for another explanation in accordance with Hume’s Test for Miracles.  Perhaps some of the priests manipulated the procedure in some way so as to substitute their judgement for God’s.  According to the Test for Miracles the alternative that the priests substituted their judgement for God’s constituted a “falsehood” to the stated miracle of God intervening to save 130 innocent men from harm.  For this to be true the “falsehood” would have to be more  miraculous than the claimed miracle of God intervening 130 times.  Clearly it is more likely that the priests intervened, after all miracles are very rare.  Therefore, some of the priests most likely jury-rigged the procedure in order to spare 130 men from harm,  probable for humanitarian reasons. Upon further thought the entire episode of  “trial-by-ordeal” reveals the inescapable conclusion: the priests who manipulated the procedure doubted or thought that God did not exist, and justice demanded that they play God in his absence.

Source:

Think Like a Freak (2014) by Steven D. Levitt & Stephen J. Dubner